The Starbucks Experience 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary
The Starbucks Experience 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SUCCESS!
You already know the Starbucks story. Since 1992, its stock has risen a staggering 5,000 percent! The genius of Starbucks success lies in its ability to create personalized customer experiences, stimulate business growth, generate profits, energize employees, and secure customer loyalty-all at the same time.
The Starbucks Experience contains a robust blend of home-brewed ingenuity and people-driven philosophies that have made Starbucks one of the world’s most admired companies, according to Fortune magazine. With unique access to Starbucks personnel and resources, Joseph Michelli discovered that the success of Starbucks is driven by the people who work there-the partners -and the special experience they create for each customer. Michelli reveals how you can follow the Starbucks way to
- Reach out to entire communities
- Listen to individual workers and consumers
- Seize growth opportunities in every market
- Custom-design a truly satisfying experience that benefits everyone involved
Filled with real-life insider stories, eye-opening anecdotes, and solid step-by-step strategies, this fascinating book takes you deep inside one of the most talked-about companies in the world today.
For anyone who wants to learn from the best-and be the best-The Starbucks Experience is a rich, heady brew of unforgettable user-friendly ideas.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars I now understand Why Starbucks is achieving success.
Heart warming stories and sound business advice. This book covers lessons, which have worked for Starbucks. There are mentions of blunders, and of course only a few. The author has rightly focused on the principles, which have transformed Starbucks into a phenomenal business leader.
2 Stars Not Such A “Grande” Experience
I was in Barnes & Noble looking for a good read while on my way out of a Starbucks. I saw this book, and being a business owner myself, thought it’d be a great read. One thing I noticed immediately was that there was no price tag. “No matter,” I thought, “this light-weight book can’t be much.”
Well, that was my first error. The book ended up being $30 for about 150 pages of content. Surely the price justified the material. I remained hopeful. So, I returned home and took a few hours to finish it in one sitting.
I, like other reviewers, thought the introduction was a little too promotional. The introduction seemed like a long advertisement for how truly amazing Starbucks was. Once I got the the first chapter, I really did sigh a breath of relief to get out of that garbage.
But, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The first chapter really isn’t so bad. You’ll learn some neat first-account stories and learn some of the Starbucks lingo. The problem is the resulting four chapters seem to recycle the same basic ideas. Also like other reviewers, I would often skip entire paragraphs and only skim a single page because of the rehashing of content and abundance of praise for Starbucks.
I also noted that not a single bad thing was said about Starbucks until 60% of the way through the book- and only two accounts of how Starbucks handled a bad situation are mentioned. I was under the impression I was going to read about how they solved problems, how the CEO managed to turn profits through innovation, and read numbers and statistics of how a company was bred into a powerhouse of a business.
I was mistaken. This book should have been renamed to “How to Run Your Customer Service Department.” That’s all you will hear about. Barista Joe Schmoe did this, Barista Jane Doe once did that. These accounts are interesting to read- but where is the substance? The business principles that go beyond customer service?
Last but not least, it seems the editor was slacking. There are several areas of the book I re-read a sentence several times to see what the sentence was trying to convey. Seems like some are missing a verb or noun, and I found a few grammar errors as well. Not that it really detracts much from the read, I thought I would mention it.
I can’t recommend this book. Something that stuck with me while reading other reviews was that someone mentioned it felt like an elongated press release. I couldn’t agree more.
In addition, you will notice these reviews are getting voted down and good reviews (of little review value, mind you) are getting voted up. Corporate influence I would assume.
5 Stars Succinct Guide To Starbucks’ Leadership Principles
The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary by Joseph A. Michelli is an excellent book about the underlying leadership principles that guide the day to day execution of one of the most successful businesses in any industry. Michelli is not a Starbucks employee (former or current) so this is not a mere propaganda device. No, this is the result of Michelli’s personal observations as a customer along with interviews of Starbucks partners. Leaders from even the best companies can find value in the 181 pages that make up The Starbucks Experience.
The books centers on the five following principles:
* Make It Your Own
* Everything Matters
* Surprise and Delight
* Embrace Resistance
* Leave Your Mark
In addition, the overarching theme of “third place” is the foundation of these principles. In trying to create a third place, Starbucks creates and environment that fosters a customer experience which people consider next in line after home and work as their primary places to spend time. Also, Starbucks extends the term customer to include both external (what most people think of as customers) and internal (the partners, i.e. employees of Starbucks). This is a very simple idea that few companies put into practice. The basic premise is that happy employees do a better job of pleasing customers. However, how many of you work for a company that does this?
Michelli does a great job of presenting his thoughts in an engaging way. It requires a delicate balance to weave in external voices (e.g. the employees he interviewed) while maintaining a cohesive flow of ideas. He also inserts what I call thought breaks at different points in each chapter. These are a simple list of questions for the reader to evaluate their own company in light of what they have read about Starbucks. This is the real reason to read leadership books about other companies, but Michelli goes the extra mile in facilitating the process for the reader. He also has a higher level set of questions at the end of each chapter on the five principles that cull out the key points. For a deeper dive in application, the Reader’s Guide at the end of the book is 20 questions spanning five pages to reinforce the ideas from the whole of the text.
While the book is targeted at leadership, the examples throughout have plenty to offer to frontline employees. You will find stories great and small of Starbucks partners going above and beyond the call of duty. In one example, a regular customer shows up early in the morning only to find that it isn’t yet time for the store to open. However one of the partners opening the store notices him, and he lets him in to get his beverage anyway. Others tell of who a barista’s efforts to provide coffee to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It would be hard to read this from cover to cover and not find at least one story that resonates with you.
So if you are looking for ideas for improvement in the workplace (from ways to perform better as an individual to strategies for improving company operations), The Starbucks Experience is a great place to start. While I’ve known from my own experience that Starbucks is a great company, I now have a better understanding of why. If I can implement even one idea in my own workplace that I’ve gained from reading this book, it will be time well spent.
2 Stars Is Starbucks Good Or Great?
It is hard for me to extrapolate the great experiences in the book of a few that go way above and beyond the millions of ordinary customer experiences that most folks have daily with Starbucks. I think that it is a good company and love their products, but have a hard time seeing businesses without the high margins associated with coffee making a similar impact.
3 Stars A good business model
You may be surprised to find out that this book was not written by someone inside Starbucks, especially considering the glowing account of how this company rose to the top and stayed there. However Michelli merely points out the five principles that Starbucks adheres to that can be beneficial when applied to ANY business. Of course along the way you will likely be amazed by all the different things Starbucks does (especially for the community). It’s a great read for multiple reasons.
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Thank you for reading and reviewing my book The Starbucks Experience. And thank you to the readers who gave thoughtful comments, both positive and negative.
All the best,
Joseph Michelli